The Duplass Brothers Bring Their Brand of Chiding Whimsy to SXSW

Mark and Jay Duplass have been busy. Though they’ve appeared in shows as varied as The Mindy Project and The Morning Show, they’re actually most prolific behind the camera, having founded Duplass Brothers Productions at the start of their careers back in 1996. Now they’re making multi-project deals with the likes of HBO and Netflix, and have so many TV shows in the pipeline as to require a showcase at this year’s SXSW, combining four pilot episodes into one screening at the Stateside theater.

These shows, which premiered on the fourth day of the festival, have a wide range of concepts: the dystopian sci-fi The Broadcast, folk music docuseries Ryley Walker & Friends, noir buddy comedy The Long Long Night, and the sweet coming-of-age travel story Penelope. Penelope and Ryley Walker & Friends adhere to traditional TV formats while The Broadcast and The Long Long Night are more experimental. And yet, all four projects share a core Duplass-ness, an earnestly funny approach to even the darkest subjects. Along the way, they gently lampoon our society’s inanities, even as they approach all of their characters with empathy.

The Broadcast is the most far-out of the four shows. Written and directed by Courtney Pauroso and Natalie Palamides, who also star, it takes place in a seamless white pod where Paurosos and Palamides’ characters are the only human inhabitants. They sleep sitting up in what appear to be regenerative sunbeds, eat black slop from cans labeled “food,” and dress in matching, pristine, white-and-blue outfits. Every day, they give “the broadcast,” an update on how there’s still no sea on Earth, although whether that’s true is unclear. Complete with hairballs and belches, The Broadcast finds its humor in contrasts: perfection versus reality, white versus black, clean versus dirty.

With its stark palette and bleak sensibility, it may seem that The Broadcast is a departure from the Duplass brothers’ typical, gentle teasing of their subjects. In fact, there’s nothing subtle about it — The Broadcast has an over-the-top theatricality, which brings a goofy earnestness to the project. We see close-ups of Pauroso and Palamides’ big reactions, and that bigness translates to the set pieces (mostly involving eating), allowing a theater-kid-type camp to emerge. It makes for a unique project, contrasting conventionally feminine aesthetics of prettiness with the ugliness at the cracks of that presentation. The Broadcast is thus a mirror image of the Duplass brothers’ nudging of beta masculinity – here, we see women skewering structures of femininity with their dark humor.

In The Long Long Night, Mark Duplass stars as one half of a decades-long friendship, gone terribly awry. In its opening sequence, we meet Pete (Mark Duplass) and Carroll (Barret O'Brien) as they explain their frustration at the world, citing climate change and a host of other leftist complaints. They acknowledge that it’s white guys like them who are responsible. To do something about it, they make a suicide pack, which they aim to complete on the long night of the show’s title. We know they fail, as much of the story is told via Pete’s messages to a now estranged Carroll, six months after the fact.

Pete may reference therapy but he’s still utterly self-centered, unable to honor his best friend since kindergarten’s basic boundaries or exercise a bit of empathy for his perspective. The Long Long Night mixes black-and-white and full-color shots to distinguish its timelines, and the result gives it a Hitchcock feel. But The Long Long Night’s mystery is utter silliness as Pete, for all his protesting about the centering of white men, cannot de-center himself to a comic degree. A surface reading of the show would be that it critiques “wokeness,” but its real heart lies in rejecting performative allyship. It’s a smart addition to the Duplass body of work, even if it’s hard to imagine The Long Long Night as a true TV pilot. Instead, it reads more as a short film.

By contrast, Ryley Walker & Friends leverages a tried-and-true formula, following indie musician Ryley Walker as he meets up with one famed folk singer per episode. In the pilot, that’s Bridget St. John, and the two write a song together and reminisce about the genre’s greats. Here, the brothers are working close to home, with Walker looking and feeling like he could be part of the family. And it’s easy to imagine the show on any number of streaming platforms, attracting the audience of documentaries like Joan Baez: I Am a Noise.

Walker’s love for music, particularly folk, shines through in this sweet series. He talks over St. John some in the pilot, but his behavior clearly comes from eagerness and passion, not a bid for dominance. And it’s easy to imagine him in future episodes, filming with more of his heroes and educating the rest of us along the way. In Ryley Walker & Friends, the Duplass aesthetic is in full effect as it delves into a counterculture that critiques mainstream consumerism without being enveloped in negativity.

And last, we have Penelope, the most commercial of the four, which also screened at Sundance and is the only one shopped around to platforms before release, according to Variety. It follows Megan Stott (Little Fires Everywhere) in the titular role as a precocious and adrift teen who decides to run away from home to go backpacking and connect with nature. She starts by using her mom’s credit card to get a bunch of camping gear and then stows away on a train, beatnik-style.

The tone is not at all bleak; there are no signs that blond, moon-faced Penelope was abused before setting off, or that she’ll encounter anything worse than a hungry belly on her trip. While sexual violence is always a concern in a story of a teen girl traveling alone, it doesn’t appear that Penelope is going to go there. Instead, she’s set for adventures that highlight strangers’ fundamental decency and allow her to grow out of her sheltered upbringing.

Together, these works all reflect a serious sense of play. They’re indie TV, experimenting with form and function as they clearly take joy in their craft and pushing its boundaries. They all also reflect a certain Duplass-ness, whether in their social critique, sense of humor, belief in humanity, or a combination of all three. They directly and indirectly address ideas of gender and whiteness, examining privilege without becoming jaded by their characters’ failings. Instead, they’re united in their aim to make their audiences think, laugh, and, perhaps, do better.

A writer and activist, Cristina Escobar is the co-founder of LatinaMedia.Co, uplifting Latina and gender non-conforming Latinx perspectives in media. She writes at the intersection of race, gender, and pop culture.